Migrant workers, advocates work to get ready for long, hot summer

As 90-degree days begin to show up in the spring, protecting migrant farmworkers from heat stress is a top priority for farmworker advocacy groups heading into what many expect will be a long, hot summer.

“Every harvest since 2022, we’ve seen either a worker die or suffer permanent brain damage from heat,” said Leticia Zavala, an organizer with El Futuro Es Nuestro, a farmworker advocacy group.

North Carolina migrant farmworkers on H‑2A visas often spend long days in sweltering summer conditions tending tobacco, sweet potatoes and other labor‑intensive crops. 

These visa holders come under a U.S. government program that allows temporary agricultural workers into the country to do jobs many Americans don’t want. Farmers who hire these workers are required to provide them with housing and access to meals, but housing has frequently been found to be substandard, and, in recent years, wage theft has been a recurring problem.

Language barriers and limited access to housing, healthy food and medical care are among the many challenges that can come with the work — along with a constant risk of heat‑related illness.

As Zavala noted, that risk is far from theoretical. In 2023, a 29‑year‑old H‑2A worker collapsed and died in the fields of Barnes Farming in Nash County. North Carolina regulators fined  the company $187,509 in 2024 and accused the sweet potato operation of failing to protect workers from heat‑related hazards.. 

Later, the agency reduced the fine and withdrew its most serious heat‑related citation after an autopsy pointed to a rare heart condition. Advocates still, however, cite the case as evidence of how deadly hot field conditions can be.

Improving farmworker safety was the focus of a volunteer event earlier this month in Spring Hope on a 24‑acre tract managed by El Futuro.

About 40 people gathered to plant peppers, corn and wildflowers “to address two issues,” Zavala said. 

“This year, the current administration lowered H‑2A wages by a third, so we're expecting some food scarcity,” she said. “We hope to share some of the food with the farmworkers in need. We have a little salsa recipe that's been trademarked that we will be processing at the end of the harvest, and we'll be using it to raise funds to continue working on the land.”

Each year the group distributes hydration packets for migrant workers. 

“The heat is getting more and more dangerous, so for workers it's not enough to drink water. Last year, we distributed 10,000 packets — this year we're expecting to double that,” Zavala said.

Farmworkers are about 35 times more likely to die from heat‑related illnesses than workers in other industries, according to a 2022 study. Nationally, it’s difficult to say exactly how many farmworkers die from heat each year because death certificates often list the immediate cause — such as a heart attack or stroke — without noting that extreme heat may have triggered it. Recent research published in the journal Nature found that official records can miss most heat‑related deaths for that reason.

Filling the gaps

As above‑normal temperatures creep into early spring in many parts of the country, the number of workers exposed to dangerous heat is significant. In fiscal year 2025, North Carolina employers had 26,123 positions certified under the H‑2A visa program, one of the highest totals in the country.

As another part of their efforts to support farmworkers, El Futuro is soliciting donations of items to help workers stay safe during extreme heat. “We want to have at least 150 health and safety kits to give to 150 farms, and we hope to distribute about 18,000 hydration packets all over the state,” Zavala said. “Last year, it was about 4,000 workers that we were able to provide hydration packets to.”

The Spring Hope farm is also becoming a kind of classroom.

“I initially wanted students at Davidson College to understand that farmworkers are part of their own community,” said Vanessa Castaneda, a professor in Latin American Studies who helped organize donations of hydration packets and other supplies. “We’re the number one sweet potato producer in the world, and there are farms very close to campus, but most students don’t realize how close these workers really are.”

Castaneda invited El Futuro organizers and farmworkers to speak with her classes, where students heard firsthand about the crowded housing, limited access to water and lack of any real heat protections in the fields. 

They also learned about “forced meal plans,” situations where H‑2A workers — who are supposed to receive three meals a day or have access to a kitchen —   are given fewer meals, no kitchen and little say in what they’re paying for, because the contract is in English and they don’t know how to challenge it.

In a 2024 research project, her students began documenting where those forced meal plans showed up in North Carolina. The work is not a full census of farms, she said, but it suggests that paying for inadequate food is a little‑known but widespread burden layered on top of long, hot days of labor.

“We’ve also heard from workers who are injured on the job and then pushed out of employer housing,” Castaneda said. “Part of the vision for this land in Spring Hope is to have temporary housing for those workers, and to use subsistence farming here so they can have fresh, nutritious food.”

‘Compounding issues’

Raul Chavaria Trejo, 51, is from Hidalgo, a central Mexican state north of Mexico City. Trejo has worked on U.S. farms as a H-2A worker from April to October since 2006, he said. Although legally permitted to work as a contract laborer, Trejo said in addition to the challenges identified by Castaneda, the current political climate adds another level of complexity to the work.

“The visa is really only good to cross the border,” Trejo said. “Once we're here, we feel like if immigration comes, we're targets, and we're gonna be harassed and chased.” 

He noted that after coming to the U.S. for decades, “This year is the first year I carry my passport everywhere I go — even to the grocery store.”

When thinking about state policies that could improve conditions for farm workers, Zavala said there’s not much out there right now.

“We haven't seen any bills that we support right now; we need heat protections,” she said. “Our current commissioner, Luke Farley, is doing anything but enforcing the little protections that we have.”

In an emailed response to a NC Health News query, a N.C. Department of Labor spokesperson said, in part, that worker safety is Commissioner Luke Farley’s “top priority.” The spokesperson noted that Farley assembled a Heat Stress Advisory Council with representatives from labor and industry “to strengthen worker protections and address heat‑related illness and injury in the workplace.” 

The statement also pointed to the department’s “Beat the Heat” campaign, which it described as a renewed effort to reduce heat stress by providing tools, resources and best practices for employers and employees. 

In North Carolina, farmworkers are protected by a patchwork of federal labor, pesticide and housing regulations, along with limited state oversight. But gaps remain in coverage, enforcement and heat protections.

Castaneda said that if people read about farmworker issues, she hopes they’ll take the next steps: reach out to groups like El Futuro, learn which policies are in place, and pay attention to which lawmakers and industry leaders support protections for farmworkers, and which benefit from the absence of care.

This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.